


Euripides Lyaeus

by yuletide_archivist



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1636736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The king meets a stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Euripides Lyaeus

**Author's Note:**

> Excerpts are fictional!   
>  I seem to have given you exactly what you didn't ask for; "plotty machinations" these are not. Please forgive! I am not as sharp as MWT. 
> 
> Written for cliosfolly

 

 

 __Hail the wanderer,  
Lyaeus who walks forever  
In the land of dreams -  
Hail his secret silence   
That steals the singing  
from the snow!  


from Euripides _Lyaeus_ , choral entrance song.  


The stranger sits languid on the window-ledge, and the round moon wraps his curls with silver. He is not looking at Gen, silent in the doorway, but out across the city to the sea; tonight the women go down the long walls, down to the shrines. Already the smoke is rising. He is watching them go. His clothes are very worn, Gen sees, and old-fashioned; in the Mede style perhaps, but it's hard to say. Gen flicks his a glance at Costis in the guardroom, at the hand on his sword-pommel, and shakes his head almost imperceptibly. He clears his throat and steps loudly into the room. "Tell me, friend, how you come to be here in the king's chamber?" 

"I might ask you the same, friend." The stranger sounds amused - there is an accent Gen cannot place in his vowels. He does not look at Gen but tips back his head against the wall, out of the moonlight. 

"I am the king." 

"Indeed? Well, my service to Your Majesty." There is a tautness to his mouth that speaks of laughter, and Gen likes him more for it. "Excuse my rudeness. I am far from home and only need a place to rest. Direct me away and I will bother you no more."

"And why have you come to the city, traveler?" Costis is looking sweetly quizzical, his head cocked to one side. Gen shuts the door behind himself.

"My mother is there," he says, nodding to the drifting lines of grey-clad women, "At the festival."

"As is my queen," says Gen, "And all the good women of this city." 

"Indeed," says the stranger, and smiles. "Indeed." He rises to leave.

"You may stay the night in the palace, if you wish. Have you eaten?" Gen raises the wine skin he has just fetched. "Drink with me, at least."

The stranger nods his assent, and alights from the windowledge with dreamlike grace. Gen pushes aside the translation he's been working on and spills the first drop of wine on the table before filling the cups. He presents the stranger with the finer one; the other thanks him and they drink.

"How can I repay your hospitality?" The stranger is smiling oddly.

"You look as though you've traveled far," says Gen. "Tell me story."

"That," says the stranger, "I can do."

"Among the gods of Attolia, and perhaps all the gods of the earth, Miras is the most beautiful. When he rises in the morning the sun rises to see him, and when he sleeps at night the moon seeks him out; he has kissed them both, and so he is lit from within and burns with the heat of a thousand fires. When he goes to the wood to practice his archery, the little goddesses of the streams and springs all come to watch and giggle behind their watery hands.

Perhaps because he is himself so beautiful, Miras was also a collector of beautiful things - he kept a box of stars beside his pillow, and let lilies grow freely in his golden hair, and he took the finest and most beautiful sons and daughters of the land to be his priests and priestesses. Yet he was never satisfied with his collection - he always desired something finer, something brighter, and indeed that all beauty in the universe be his. But with each thing he took, there was one less beauty in the world, and the next was harder to find. When, after many ages, he believed that he had found all the beautiful things, and his heart was sore with wanting, he issued a challenge. Whoever could find the last and most beautiful thing in the world would have the shining heart of Miras in return."

"Ah, I know this story," said Gen. "My friend has told me. The poor peasant girl brings Miras her love, and that is more beatiful than any of the thousand gifts of men and gods. A bit sweet for my tastes, but a classic thought."

The stranger shook his head. "Is that how they tell it now? Well, perhaps that is possible. But I know it another way."

One of those who heard about the challenge of was Lyaeus, the half-mortal son of the goddess Kabeiraia and the king of the summer country. Often he had watched Miras from afar, with both admiration and longing, and he greatly desired his silver heart. So he set out to discover the most beautiful thing of all. 

He searched for many years, in many lands. He fought a hundred battles and won a thousand things - precious stones, golden cups, tripods and women and silks. Yet he was sure that each thing he won could not be the most beautiful, and so he walked on. He won the shimmer of the waves and the smell of the rain and the sound of the snow, and completed many tasks both earthly and divine - he even descended into the underworld to bring back a song from the dead. And when he had gathered all the beautiful things he could, he brought them back to the realm of the gods.

But Lyaeus knew that if he won the heart of Miras, he would never return to his father's house, to see his brother become king or his sisters marry, and he could not bear to leave his home behind, so he sat down in the mountain pass that is the gate to the immortal lands, with all his beautiful gifts around him, and wept. He thought of his homeland, and could not think of why he had left; he dreamt of the golden hair and silver eyes of Miras, and could not think why he had not gone through the pass. 

When he at last arose from weeping, he found that world was changed. While he sat in the valley of the gods, many centuries had passed; his house was broken, and his father's kingdom blown away like sand. Miras had waited for him for many years - for he had always hoped that Lyaeus would win his heart - but eventually conceded to take another prize.

Eugenides had cut a piece from a reed, and held the ends closed with his thumbs; he'd stolen a single note from the song of every bird in the forest, and caught them in the pipe. He'd given it then to Miras, and cut holes in the top for the notes to escape - knowing that they would leave the essence of themselves behind. So Eugenides invented the flute, and gained the heart of Miras; he hung it in the sky as a light for travelers, and though all the other stars move, that one stays fixed in place. Miras, heartless, became the god of soldiers, and one by one the beautiful things fell back into the world."

"A strange story," said Gen, "Given that the gods of Attolia and the gods of Eddis are not known to enjoy each other's company." 

"Well," said the stranger. "That is how it is know to me. We all walk abroad sometimes, I suppose."

"And what became of Lyaeus, who could not decide?"

"Ah, little brother," says the stranger, "Some things are best not known."

+

When Gen awakes, the sun is coming through the window and falling bright on his face. Irene stands beside him; she smells of ash and incense from the rites of the night before.

"Good morning, my king," she says, wry and sharp in the cool morning. "Is there a reason you chose to sleep on the table?" 

"The bed is too hard," says Gen. His neck cracks when he sits up, and there is a dull, fuzzy ache settled behind his eyes. Too much wine. Around him are scattered the pages of translation from the night before; his pen has rolled away across the floor, and only by some miracle has he not knocked over the bottle of ink. 

Irene looks amused. "Did you have a good time with Archilochus?"

"It was wonderfully exciting," says Gen. "People fought, and then he seduced a girl." In truth, it had been both incredibly frustrating and very beautiful - with no context for the fragments, the poetry spun wild circles around any translation. Pinning it down to one meaning was a painful process. He had spent the evening trying to force the middle voice into modern language, incomprehensible reflexives on the tip of his tongue - but that's the heart of it, really, finding the spaces around which the poem turns. He sighs. "And you? How were your mysterious tragedies?"

"Mysterious," says Irene, with a smile. He has been asking her about them for days, but she will not yield. The rites of Kabeiraia the reaper are secret and not for the eyes of men.

"Come," she says, "And we'll eat in the garden. The sun is barely risen."

"Or," says Gen, "We could be lazy and sleep in. Surely it's understandable if you've been up all night." He puts his hand on the curve of her hip and raises an eyebrow, and she laughs.

"You are not very sly, Eugenides, for a thief."

"I am when I want to be," he says, and leads her, laughing, to the bed.

Behind them, the window looks to the mountains; across the room, the other looks over the sea. 

_I will not sit [ ]_  
now the girls are dancing in the smoke  


and silver at their wrists - I watch alone  


Sappho, fragment 210. 

 


End file.
